Tonight Alive
by onmytoes
Summary: Rey fell in love with with her best friend Ben Solo in high school. Years after he breaks her heart, she is on the verge of marrying someone else when he unexpectedly comes back into her life.


An anon asked me to do a Reylo story based on the song "Tonight Alive," and this is the darkness that came out of my brain.

 **TRIGGER WARNING: Domestic abuse.**

 **Tonight Alive**

"Rey, will you marry me?"

She is 25 years old. Samuel is down on knee. Samuel is opening a velvet red box with a diamond ring nestled inside of it. Samuel is … proposing.

The entire restaurant is staring at them as Rey's mouth drops open, and thank goodness for that. It looks like surprise. It looks like delight. What it doesn't look like is Rey carefully calculating that Samuel is on the brink of getting promoted to partner, and needs a pretty wife to round out his image; Rey looking back on the last few years of them dating on and off again and realizing they've never once talked about marriage; Rey wondering the answers to a lot of questions she should have had about this man before this moment now.

Two seconds pass. Three. It is excruciating. A smile is plastered to his face, but she knows him well enough to see the veiled irritation the longer it takes for her to answer.

"Yes," she says. There is an acute relief in saying it, in releasing the tension. "Yes, of course, yes."

The restaurant applauds them, and a violin starts playing, and Rey feels her face flush with embarrassment. He embraces her, and slides the ring on her finger. It is tasteful and expensive-looking. A perfect fit.

He kisses her, murmurs something in her ear that she nods and smiles at without really hearing, and she waits for the knot in her stomach to uncoil for the rest of the night.

* * *

"Rey, can I borrow a pencil?"

She is 14 years old. Some overly-tall, brooding guy is sitting behind her in detention, poking her out of her reverie. She turns.

"How do you know my name?"

His dark eyes don't seem capable of blinking. "The teacher said it during roll call."

"We're not supposed to have pencils," she says.

"That's why I was asking you for one."

She turns her back on him then, feeling her spine tingle a bit as she realizes she can still feel his stare on her. "Also, we're not supposed to talk."

He snorts. "Freshmen."

She bristles, but doesn't respond, fixing her gaze on the whiteboard. The teacher is grabbing coffee, but she'll be back any moment, and Rey doesn't want any more trouble than she's already in.

"What'd they get you in here for, anyway?" he asks.

Ben, she remembers suddenly. Not because the teacher called his name, but because he and a bunch of other kids in the sophomore class got suspended for trying to scale the cafeteria wall after midnight. Their parents all got an email about it. Well, other kids' parents did. Rey's foster dad must have just ignored it.

She shouldn't even talk to him, but she wants him to know she's not a rule breaker. "I was late too many times," she says. She doesn't add that it wasn't her fault. Unkar was too hungover to drive her and she lives outside of the bus route. "You?"

She can hear the smirk in Ben's voice even if she can't see him. "Punched a guy named Hux too many times."

She raises her brows. "Lovely."

* * *

"Rey, are we going to set a date or not?"

She is 26 years old. Samuel is sitting rigidly in a leather chair in what used to be his bachelor pad, but is now an apartment that they share. The open windows give way to a sprawling view of the Manhattan skyline. Rey has a constant sense of being watched.

"I just got back," she reminds him. She had a shoot in Peru, and another in Norway. Sometimes she will go weeks without an assignment, but the summers are always a busy time on the international photography circuit.

"We've been engaged for a year."

He's in one of his moods again, she can tell. Trouble at work, maybe. He doesn't like to talk about it, so she has learned not to ask.

"Why don't you set a date?" she says, placating him. Her voice is teasing. "I trust you."

"Because that's not my job," he says tensely. "It's supposed to be yours. You're supposed to be excited about this."

The smile slides off her face. "I am, Samuel," she says, perching herself on the arm of her chair. Too late she has realized the source of his insecurity, the true reason for his mood. "Is that what you think? That I'm not excited?"

She sees some of the icy veneer falling away as he says, with less of an edge in his voice, "You don't talk about the wedding much."

"I don't," she admits. "But you know what I do talk about a lot?"

He doesn't answer, his pale eyes waiting. She kisses him lightly.

"You."

He smiles. The next morning she picks up a calendar and circles a random date in the autumn of the next year.

* * *

"Rey, where do you live?"

She is 15 years old. The sun is setting, and she is laying with her back in the moist grass, and Ben Solo is beside her. She almost wishes he would not interrupt, because she is trying commit this moment to memory. The peace of it. The sweetness of it. The way that she feels weirdly at ease with him here, the way she hasn't with anyone else.

She hums noncommittally.

"It's just, I've never seen your house. You're like a ghost. You just show up at school and leave and come back again."

"So do you."

"Yeah, but you've seen my house. You've met my parents."

"Your mom is my English teacher."

"Ugh. Don't remind me."

If someone had asked her how the hell she became friends with Ben Solo — and with buddies like Finn and Poe, people definitely and persistently did — she couldn't exactly say why. She knows what she likes about being with him. She likes that she can be honest with him. That they can make fun of each other. That even though they rarely hang out, especially like this, there is a deep and unspoken intimacy, like she could tell him anything if she really wanted to. She doesn't, of course — but she could.

But she cannot pinpoint a moment when it happened. She cannot trace the events linearly in her mind. They met, and then slowly, gradually … this.

"Hey, kid."

"Hmmm?"

"Kid, wake up."

Rey flies up into a sitting position. The stars overhead have shifted. Her entire backside is damp from the grass, and Ben is beside her, his face lit up and guilty in the light of his cellphone. Rey can see all the missed calls from here.

"Time'sit?" she manages.

His voice is grim. "Three in the morning."

She laughs out loud. She isn't sure why. Unkar is going to have a god damn fit when she gets home, and she'll be lucky if she gets out of working double shifts at the garage every weekend until she graduates.

"Drive me home?" she asks.

He can't quite look at her. "I don't have a license."

She laughs even harder.

"It's not funny," he says.

"I know, I know it's not," she says, practically snorting in her effort to stop herself, "it's just — "

And then he's laughing too, the both of them giddy with their guilt and their stupidity, the sound of it echoing in the empty park. Eventually his dad rolls up and they both shamefacedly prepare themselves for a lecture that doesn't come. Mr. Solo almost looks amused, delivering his "hey, don't do that again" with about as much authority as a dishrag. He waits for her to open the door to her house and turn on the lights before driving away, and she catches Ben's face as her crawls back up to the passenger seat, mouthing an apology through the window.

She is expecting Unkar to be up and ready to scream at her, only to realize another minute or so later that nobody even realized she'd been gone.

* * *

"Rey, who are you calling?"

She is 27 years old. It is the eve of Finn and Poe's joint bachelor party, and seeing as they've combined them, it's less of a bachelor party of more of a "let's round up all our mutual friends and get drunk" party. And drunk is certainly what Rey has gotten.

"Nobody," she says stupidly. The phone is still ringing in her ear.

Finn's brow puckers in concern. "And why are you using a payphone, when you have a perfectly good — "

"You caught me," she says, her smile stretching like a rubber band. "I was — I was going to try and prank you and Poe. For a laugh."

"Hah!" says Finn, drunk enough himself that he buys the story at once. "You're off your game, you're going to have to be more crafty than that." His eyes widen. "Or is this the distraction? Oh, no. Ohhhh no."

His head turns back over to the bar and she smirks at him, settling the phone back in its cradle — but not before she hears the sound of his voice on the other line, so achingly familiar that it wakes up some part of her heart she didn't realize was there: "Hello?"

* * *

"Rey, do you think it's going to rain?"

She is 16 years old. She and Ben are walking home from school to his house. It is the last week of her sophomore year, and the first week of his senior finals. She has been walking around with an uneasiness all month that only seems to grow steadier with each passing day, finding any excuse she can to hang out with him, to walk past his locker, to wander around near the parking lot of a gas station she saw him exactly one time buying gum and then never saw him again.

"Hey."

She doesn't realize that Ben has walked a few strides ahead and walked directly in front of her until she is walking face-first right into his chest. "Oh," she says, "shit, sorry, I — "

Then his hands are bracing her upper arms, his eyes looking into hers, some mixture of playful and genuinely curious.

"What the hell is going on with you, kid?" he asks.

Oh, god. His stupid handsome face is so close to hers that she could just kiss it and he wouldn't even be able to stop her, it could be that fast, like ripping off a horrible band-aid that then just happened to burn their entire friendship to the ground.

"Uh, what? With me?" she manages.

"Yeah," he says, squinting at her. "You've been acting all weird."

"Finals," she says, shrugging him off, suddenly a little breathless.

He lingers for a moment, then steps out of her way. "Yeah, tell me about — ohhh, fuck."

She squeals, and by then the sky has unleashed an unholy amount of fury down on them, the rain plummeting with such astonishing force and speed that they are soaked to the bone before they can even hoist their backpacks over their heads. They both sprint, easily matching each other's pace — between his ridiculously long legs and her track star status, they're pretty unstoppable — but he grabs her hand anyway, grinning at her through the downpour, and she is too stunned to pull hers away.

He only lets it go when they've reached the entrance of his house and they burst in, drenching all over the carpet.

"Mom? Dad?"

No answer. He turns back around and when she gets a good look at him, she can't help but giggle.

"What?" he asks, looking uncharacteristically self-conscious.

"You look like a gutter rat," she says.

"Oh yeah? Look who's talking."

"Here," she says, walking into the front bathroom where she knows his mom keeps the towels. She grabs one for herself and one for him, unceremoniously throwing it on his head. He stands there, letting it fall on him like an oversized lampshade. She feels just bold and giddy enough from the rain that a strange kind of impulse courses through her, and she bounds up to him, rubbing the towel on either side of his head to dry his long mane of hair. He leans down slightly to accommodate her, and when his head emerges from the towel it is inches from hers, and she kisses him.

Or — or he kisses her. She doesn't know. Her eyes are closed, and their lips are pressed together, and he tastes a little bit like cigarettes and mint, and then her her eyes are open and his aren't and she is stumbling back and —

"Oh, shit," she whispers.

Then she turns on her heels and runs back out into the rain.

* * *

"Rey, are you there?"

She is 27 years old. It is the night after Finn and Poe's bachelor party, and she is laying on the couch in their superiorly cozy Brooklyn apartment, her head throbbing and her stomach roiling. If she is being honest with herself, she can't remember a lot of last night, but as soon as she starts listening to the familiar voice in her phone messages, one memory reemerges with brutal clarity.

She presses the phone to her ear, hungry for the sound of his voice.

"It's, uh – it's Ben," he says. "This is going to sound strange, but — I got a call from a random number in New York last night, and I was thinking about people I know in New York, and well … you're the only person I could think of."

That's a lie. He was invited to Finn and Poe's wedding, for one. And they have plenty of school friends in the city.

"Anyway, uh — I hope that you're well. I really … I hope things are good for you. I always have."

The message ends there, but she keeps the phone pressed to her ear and lays there like that for a long time.

* * *

"Rey, are you crying?"

She is 17 years old. She swipes at her face defiantly. "No," she snaps at him. He stares down at her. "Okay. A little."

Ben smiles at her, then pulls her in. She can feel the other people at the bus station watching them, but she doesn't care. The memories of this past summer are already hazing in her mind, yellowing at the edges like the sun is setting on them. Kissing on a porch swing. Chasing down an ice cream truck. Laying on their hill in the park and staring up at the stars. She understood that they didn't have much time, but somehow understanding that did nothing to cushion the blow.

"Hey, kid."

His hand is under her chin, compelling her to look up at him. She hears the squeal of the bus tires as it rolls up to collect him.

"I love you."

There are tears brewing in her eyes. "I love you, too," she says earnestly, wholly. She has never loved anyone like this, and even at 17, she is solemnly aware that she never will. She is so dizzy with her love for him that it sometimes feels like it is eating her from the inside out. She loves the weight of his eyes on her, the bark of his laughter. The way his parents encourage her, the way he teases her in front of their friends and whispers sweet things in her ear as soon as they're gone. The way she never has to wonder if he loves her, when she has second-guessed everyone else in her life.

"Is one of you getting on this bus or not?"

At some point they started kissing, the taste of him mingling with her tears. Now the bus is fully loaded, save for Ben and his suitcases.

"I'll be home for Thanksgiving break," he says.

She shudders as his arms slide away from her. "That's forever from now."

He kisses the top of her forehead. "I'll be back before you know it."

* * *

"Rey, is that you?"

She is 23 years old. She is standing in the chill outside Penn Station, waiting for Finn to get off work so they can meet Poe for drinks at some dive in Brooklyn he's been talking up. At first she doesn't recognized the fair-haired man in the dark coat — the years have sharpened his cheeks a bit, made his eyes a little keener, his frame a little more filled out.

"I'm Samuel," he says. "Samuel Hux? I think we went to high school together — "

"Hux," she says, willing herself not to laugh. "Wow! It's been — uh, it's been so long …"

"Yeah," he says a little wryly. "I'm guessing that Ben isn't too far, then."

Hearing his name punctures her unexpectedly, like a bruise she thought had long since healed. "Oh …" she says, licking her lips, trying to figure out what to say.

Samuel waves her off. "Water under the bridge," he says. "We're all adults now."

"No, no, it's not that — " She cringes, remembering at one the absurd fights Ben and Samuel used to get into in the school parking lot at football games or even once at prom. She clears her throat and says in what she hopes sounds like a casual voice, "I actually haven't seen Ben in a few years."

"Oh, yeah?" Samuel asks, unable to conceal his surprise. "Wow. The way you two were going at it senior year, I just thought …"

"Nope," says Rey tightly, averting her eyes. She looks past him, hoping she will see Finn's familiar smile bobbing in the crowd, but no such luck. She smiles at Samuel to be polite, but her thoughts are already way beyond him, spiraling back to a place she left long ago.

"I have to catch a train," says Samuel. He presses something into her hand — a business card. It looks so grown up and official in her palm. "I'd love it if we could catch up sometime."

"Yeah," she says faintly.

It occurs to her that as she watches his retreating back, she and Samuel did not have a single thing in common in high school, and she assumed she never would. Now she realizes she might just be the only person on the planet who has more of a reason to hate Ben than he does.

The number burns a hole into the pocket of her wallet for a week. At Poe's 27th birthday party, she is too cheap to buy dinner and gets hammered off of four shots, and calls Samuel drunkenly from the bathroom, leaving a slurred message that they should meet.

That night is the first of their many casual hookups — drunk as she is, she remembers vividly the cleanly order of his apartment, the polished leather furniture, the sleek minimalistic design. She remembers admiring how put together he seemed, and acknowledging even then how constant he was, how steady. He was not the kind of man who would surprise her. He was not the kind of man who would wake up one day out of the blue and change his mind. He was not the kind of man she would ever love deeply, but the kind she could love safely, and after a heartbreak like hers it is all she can really ask for.

* * *

"Rey, what's your problem?"

She is 18 years old. Ben is standing outside of the door of the dingy, shitty little apartment she barely has scraped together enough money to live in, on the outskirts of their hometown. She left Unkar's house the morning she turned 18 and has calculated just how roughly she'll have to live over the next few months before graduation with what few savings she has, but it's working. She is making a life for herself, working part-time after school and on the weekends, even making plans to travel as soon as she graduates.

She was so proud to show him. Sure, he had seemed a little off on Thanksgiving break; he'd come home in dark clothes, acting a little moody, seeming a little impatient with her. But he had still been her Ben, and she bit her tongue.

Now it's Christmas, and he's drunk. Belligerently drunk, and about to wake her neighbors.

"Nothing's wrong with me," she says heatedly. "What's wrong with you?"

He raises his hands in an exasperated gesture. "I invited you out tonight, and you didn't come. It's like you don't even want to see me at all."

"I didn't — I didn't want to hang out with your friends while they all got drunk and did stupid shit, Ben," she says, standing her ground. "I don't know any of them, and you know I don't drink, and it's just — it's weird —"

"So my friends are weird, huh?"

"I didn't mean it like that."

"How did you mean it then?" Ben asks, running a hand through his hair. "Do you just not want to be around me anymore, kid? Is that it?"

"No," she says, feeling like her heart might burst. She wishes he would just come into the apartment with her, that they could make coffee and talk this out and hold each other like normal people. "It's just … Jesus, Ben, I feel like I don't even know you anymore. One of those girls called you Kylo and I don't even know where the hell that came from — "

"I have a nickname, big deal — "

"It's not — you're missing the point," she says stubbornly, staring up at him with wide eyes, trying to make him understand. "You're different, Ben. You're — you're hard. You're a little mean."

He softens at that, seeming to come back to himself a little more. She has never been drunk before, so she cannot account for the effects of it, for what it does to a person. But whatever she said seems to have gotten through to him. He slumps a little, looking properly shamed, and even lifts his hand up to cup her cheek. She leans her head into it, watching him carefully. If he could see in just one look how much she loves him, he hopes he can see it in her eyes right now.

"Maybe …" His voice is so low she can barely hear it. "Maybe we're just outgrowing each other."

It feels like he has knocked the wind out of her. "Don't say that," she says, shaking her head. She takes a step toward him, searching his face, but it is unyielding. She lifts herself up on the tips of her toes and kisses him — his chin, his lips, the side of his jaw. He doesn't kiss her back, and with every second she feels herself crumple even more.

"Ben …"

"I'm sorry," he says, pressing a kiss to her forehead. It is so different from that kiss at the bus stop that she already knows it's over, even if he won't say it. "Let's — let's get breakfast in the morning, okay? It'll be okay. Don't cry, Rey. It'll be okay."

She lets him hold her, even though she knows it won't be.

* * *

"Rey, do you want to tell me something?"

She is 27 years old. It is a week before Finn and Poe's wedding, and she is lifting her bridesmaid dress out of the box and admiring it against her body in the bathroom's full-length mirror.

"No," she says a little warily, coming out of the bathroom. "Do you want to tell me something?"

Samuel is sitting on the edge of their bed, his back rigid, staring at her with hard eyes.

"That's my phone," she says dumbly.

"Yes," he says in a measured voice. "It is."

"Did someone call?" she asks, feeling an icy dread overcome her. "Is everyone alright?"

"Oh, someone called," he says, pulling out the phone and displaying the voice message box to her. She takes a few tentative steps toward it, squinting at the screen. The name Ben Solo flashes back at her.

She shakes her head, relaxing at once, feeling a little foolish for overreacting. "Yeah, Ben called."

"You never told me."

She frowns. "Because I didn't think you'd care," she says. "You've got my phone — you can see I didn't call him back."

"Did you call him from another number?" he says, his pale eyes still distrusting. "He mentioned another number in his message — "

"No," she says firmly, indignant even as she lies to his face. She feels her cheeks flushing, her neck growing hot. She crosses her arms at him and says, "Is the interrogation over then? Can we get back to our regularly scheduled programming?"

He doesn't answer, still clutching the phone in his fingers. Rey stares back at him for a few careful seconds, letting him ride out his anger, letting him realize that he has made a mistake and adjust accordingly. When he doesn't, she turns to leave the room, knowing full well that at some point in the next half hour he will skulk in with a meaningful apology, that he will hold her on the couch and tell her it won't happen again.

She has only made it a few paces away when she feels his hand on her wrist. It is so vice-like that she stumbles, jerked back by the momentum.

"You're telling the truth?" he says through his teeth.

She takes a shaky, steadying breath. "You're hurting me."

He releases her hand, but not immediately. A few seconds pass and her heart leaps into her throat — when she looks back at him, his eyes are wild. Unrecognizable. As soon as he drops her hand she takes a few hurried steps away from him.

He is apologizing before she even leaves the room. She forgives him. But even after they order in dinner, even after they watch television on the couch together, even after they make perfunctory love in their bed, she still feels the burn of his fingers on her wrist as she drifts into an uneasy sleep.

* * *

"Rey, are you ready?"

She is 19 years old. It has been two weeks since she told Ben that she wasn't going to college with him. It has been two weeks since she told Ben that she wanted to travel instead, that she has enough saved and will make money as she goes. It has been two weeks since Ben broke up with her, told her that it was for the best, and made her promise to stay in touch.

It has been four days since Rey peed on the stick that decided her fate. It has been four days of calling Ben over and over and over again, leaving voicemails, leaving emails, calling his landline whenever she knows his parents aren't home. It has been four days of heartache and silence, and finally — a resolution.

The nurse is kind to her, asking her the right questions, saying all the reassuring things without ever once probing too much. The whole process is a lot easier than Rey expected. She actually has to come in twice — there's a pill that she takes the first time that will make her bleed, and three days later she will come back to take the other. A couple of weeks after that she will come back for a check up. She doesn't feel much when she takes the pill, except annoyance that it costs so much money, and that she will have to delay the first leg of her post-graduate trip. It doesn't seem real to her. She is too numb.

That first night she wakes up in agony, the cramps so unbearable that she can barely move, only managing to curl into herself. The bleeding seems infinite, the pain like a punishment — she only had sex with Ben once, hoping against hope that it would be enough, that it might keep him with her when nothing else seemed to work.

She was wrong, and now she is the one paying the price.

Suddenly she is sobbing — great gulping, inconceivable sobs. She called him so many times. How callous was he, how cruel, that he didn't even bother to check in with her? He knows how guarded she is, how careful. He knows that she wouldn't have called him like that unless it was really, really important. She has been so cautious her whole life, setting up her world so carefully so that she would never need anyone, and the one time she did …

Even as she is doing it she's regretting it, knowing how stupid and immature it is. But she finds some leftover rum Poe left in the apartment one night, unscrews the lids, and drinks. Take it easy, she remembers the nurse saying. It burns all the way down, fire in her throat, in her lungs, in her stomach. It is the first time she's ever had alcohol, and it's every bit as awful as she thought it would be.

She is still crying a half hour later, and drunk. She has forgotten about the pain of the cramps, the pain in her heart too swollen to acknowledge anything else. She sloppily grabs her phone off the nightstand and punches the recent calls button, her heart beating louder and louder with every ring, until it finally reaches the end of the voice message —

"I hate you," she says, the words bubbling and incoherent, ripping out of her throat. "I hate you, I hate you, and I never want to see you again."

It is not as satisfying as she imagines it will be; if anything, she feels worse. She slumps her bed, the tears falling silently, her breath hiccuping. She hates herself for watching the phone. She hates herself for waiting to see if he'll call back. She hates herself for being so unlovable, so easily dismissed, so alone.

She swipes at her nose, her eyes, wiping the moisture off her face. No. That's not true. There are a lot of shitty things about this, but that isn't one of them.

She picks up her phone and dials again. Poe picks up on the first ring.

"Rey?"

"Hi," she says, trying to keep her voice steady and failing massively. "Could you guys come get me?"

He doesn't ask questions. "We'll be there in ten. Sit tight."

* * *

"Rey, whatever happened to Ben?"

She is 24 years old. She has been seeing Samuel on and off for a year, and isn't entirely sure what to call him. Not a boyfriend, certainly. She's out of the country most of the time, assisting on shoots and eventually even running some of her own. Sometimes she sees Samuel when she gets back, sometimes she doesn't, but when she does the script is usually the same: they go to some restaurant and have a nice meal, get a little wine tipsy at his apartment, have sex, and fall asleep on opposite sides of the bed. He's nice to wake up to. He always keeps pancake mix and eggs in the apartment so she can whip some up whenever she happens to stay over on a weekend. It's casual and it's nice, skimming the surface, never crystallizing into anything more than what it is.

So when he asks her about Ben a year into this strange little dance, she feels suddenly out of her depth. She is glad that they are on the bed when he asks this, that her head just happens to be tucked into her chest, or else he might have seen the flicker of her face.

"To be honest," she says lightly, "I'm not sure."

"You must keep up with him on Facebook or something."

"No," she says.

It's the honest truth, so she doesn't say anything more. The last she heard from Ben was a string of calls the night after she left that lost sobbing, drunken voicemail on his phone — he called at 10 times that day, but Rey couldn't bear it. Finn blocked the number from her phone, and he and Poe spent the next few days flanking her like guard dogs, never leaving her alone for more than a second and even coming along with her to her second appointment. Ben may have broken her heart that day, but it also served as a reminder that she had the best friends in the world.

"I heard he lives on the West Coast now," Samuel says. "I'm not sure what he does. I think he has a girlfriend — "

"Could we — " She interrupts him so fast that she has to stop herself, steady her tone. She looks up at him and smiles, recovering from the snap. "Let's talk about something else," she says, trying to sound coy. She kisses his cheek, just under the pale lashes of his eyes.

"Yeah," he agrees hastily.

The next time they meet, Samuel opens a very expensive wine and tells her he loves her. She says it back, trying not to wonder too hard exactly what it means.

* * *

"Miss, did you drop this?"

She is 27 years old. Finn and Poe's wedding has gone off without a hitch, and the two of them are now doing a gloriously drunk rendition of a vintage Taylor Swift song on the karaoke machine Rey had installed at the reception at the last minute. She points to get the videographer's attention, and the woman smirks at her and gives her the thumbs up before heading over to film some seriously awesome potential blackmail material.

"Miss?"

Rey whips around and sees a man's outstretched hand holding her pale pink shawl. "Oh, thanks, I must have — "

She stops short, staring into a pair of eyes she never thought she'd see again.

"Hello," she says vacantly, forgetting to take the shawl from him.

Ben Solo is standing in front of her. He is decidedly a man now, all drawn up and broad in his navy suit, his hair cut short and his face clean-shaven. Everything about him seems entirely different save for the kindness in those dark eyes, the ones she used to know so well.

"Hello," he says back, nodding at her while never once taking his gaze off of her.

"I didn't — I didn't think you RSVP'd," she says, feeling a little breathless, little lightheaded, even.

He nods. "I was a little late, there was this thing at work, and …" He trails off, his throat bobbing as he swallows, hard. "How — how are you, Rey?"

"I'm well," she says. "I'm fine. How are you?"

His brow furrows just slightly, searching her face. She has forgotten the way that he makes her nerves thrum, the way he makes her skin itch, and the years that have passed only seem to magnify the effect of him. They are older now, more assured of their minds, their bodies, their hearts, but within a few seconds of being in his presence ever careful year of building herself into what she is today unravels at his feet.

"Rey," he says. "How are you really?"

Something in her heart seems to crumple at that — at this presumption of his, that he knows her so well that he thinks he can still see under her surfaces, when he is the one who left them cracked in the first place.

She takes her shawl back from him with her left hand. His eyes do not miss the ring gleaming on her finger, but just in case, she smiles wide and says, "I'm engaged."

It's his turn to be hurt now. She sees the quick wince before he regains composure. It is a fraction of what he put her through, but it is all she can manage. She was never as good at leaving an impression on him as he was on her.

"Engaged," he repeats, his voice a little too loud, a little too high. "Congratulations."

"Thanks," she says, feeling a little deflated all of a sudden. "I — oh."

An arm clenches around her waist, pulling her in so quickly that she wheezes. "Samuel," she says, seeing a fierceness in his expression that she hasn't seen since — well, since high school. She smiles broadly at him, trying to soften him, but he is staring at Ben.

"Solo," he says, extending the hand that he doesn't have wrapped around Rey's waist.

Ben doesn't take it. "Hux."

Rey clears her throat, trying to budge out of Samuel's ever-tightening grasp. "Well, this is a … sweet little reunion and all, but …"

"Wait," says Ben, his eyes flitting from her, to Samuel, to the ring. "You're — you're engaged to Hux?"

"Yes," says Samuel. "We're getting married in October."

But Ben isn't looking at him anymore, staring at Rey with genuine concern brewing in his eyes. It is painful to look at, so much so that she turns her head away — mercifully, the caterers have started rolling out the cake, giving her the perfect excuse to dismiss herself.

For the rest of the night Samuel is attached to her side, finding reasons to put an arm around her, to kiss her, to touch her. She doesn't resist, trying to be patient with him, trying not to make a scene at the wedding of her two best friends. But as Samuel gets indulges in enough drinks that Rey loses count, he seems to get more and more edgy, more and more miscalculating with the way he touches her, always a little too possessive, a little too tight.

Maybe she wouldn't notice it so much if she weren't so acutely aware of Ben's eyes on them, quietly watching from across the room.

"We should go home," Samuel grunts at some point.

"You're right," says Rey. "I'll drive."

His eyes flash up her. "You think I'm too drunk to drive?" he asks.

"I know you're too drunk to drive," she says, intertwining her hands with his to soften the blow, to will him to behave in front of all of these people. It is rare that Samuel ever drinks to excess, but she knows from the few times he has that it does not bring out the best in him.

As they make their way to the car she can sense him — Ben, following them up the walk into the parking lot. She turns just slightly and sees that his mouth is open, poised to say something, but she shakes her head sharply. It's enough to stall him, and in the next few seconds Samuel is in the car, and she has turned on the ignition, and they're driving back into the city, away from Ben and his stormy eyes.

* * *

Samuel passes out almost as soon as they get home. Rey cannot get out of her dress fast enough, as if seeing Ben again has somehow tainted her, has cast a new lens on her life and made everything look ugly. She rubs the make up off of her face, pulls her hair out of its updo, sets the shower so hot it practically scalds her. She comes out of it red, raw, and still thinking of bed.

She takes her time toweling herself off, examining her naked self in the mirror in a way she usually wouldn't bother. She scrutinizes every freckle, every curve, every shift that has taken place in the last ten years. She sees herself the way Ben might have seen her back then, versus the way she sees herself now.

Then she tears her eyes away. It's a stupid, fleeting thought. She will go to bed tonight, and wake up to a very hungover fiancé, and they will stay in bed all day tomorrow and never think about this again.

"Rey, what the fuck is this?"

She's in her robe when she emerges out of the steamy bathroom and into the relative cold of their room. He's holding her phone again. She doesn't have to ask why; she already had a feeling Ben would call, and she was stupid. She should have taken the phone into the bathroom with her. She should have anticipated this.

"You're drunk," she says quietly.

" _You're drunk,_ " he repeats, mocking her. "Don't avoid the question, Rey. What the _fuck_ is this? Why the fuck is he calling you? Why the _fuck_ am I getting woken up by your phone buzzing when _Ben fucking Solo_ is calling your phone?"

He's not just arguing, he's screaming at her now. His face is so red that the veins are jutting out of his neck.

"You need to calm down," she says carefully.

He flies up off the bed, not quite steady on his feet. "Calm down?" he says savagely. She has never seen him this riled, this menacing. She is so stunned that even though every nerve in her body is screaming at her to go, all she can do is stare in disbelief. "You're cheating on me and you want me to _calm down?_ "

"I'm — I'm what?" she stammers. "Oh, Jesus, Samuel, you've got to be — "

She gasps, not ready for the impact of him as he grabs her by the wrists and pins her to the wall.

"Don't lie to me," he says.

"I'm not," she says emphatically, trying to back her face away from him, with nowhere to go but the wall.

"Don't _lie_ to me, you little whore — "

She can't free her hands fast enough so she spits on him. In the next instant she is released, and then seeing stars; he has clocked her clear across the face. She doubles over, grabbing the dresser just before she hits the floor, feeling the shock of the pain pulse through her cheek, her eye, her head.

When she looks up at him he looks genuinely horrified, frozen in place, his fist still cocked from swinging it. She should be horrified as well, but all she feels is an eerie calm. Without a word she pulls herself up and takes a breath. Then without any ceremony, without looking at him, she crosses the room to her dresser. She starts grabbing clothes indiscriminately, sliding on whatever she can find — an faded old pair of jeans, a cotton t-shirt, an old sweater.

"Rey …"

"Please don't talk to me."

"But Rey — "

She's rifling through the closet now. She always has a bag of clean clothes packed for her trips, and she has never been more grateful for that than she is right now. She grabs the rolling suitcase, grabs her camera equipment, grabs her wallet and her keys, then turns to face Samuel.

"Give me my phone."

He shakes his head. "Please," he says. "Let me make this up to you. Please, Rey, let me explain — "

"Give me that phone, and I'll consider not pressing charges," she says through her teeth. "Imagine how much the other partners would get a kick out of seeing your name on a court document."

He relinquishes the phone, and she's off. He doesn't say anything as she pauses at the door, until he realizes why — she has pulled the ring off of her finger, and placed it on table in the front hall.

"Please," he says, his voice warbling. "We haven't even talked about this — "

"There's nothing to discuss." She opens the door, dragging her things behind her, and doesn't look back. "Goodbye, Hux."

* * *

Only once she hits the street does she realize two snags in her plan: one is that she's bleeding, and the other is that she accidentally left her credit card with one of the vendors this morning. She is attracting all kinds of strange looks, so she pulls up the hood of her sweater and keeps her head low, wondering how she went from a full-grown, stable adult in a healthy relationship to practically homeless over the course of one night.

It's three in the morning and her phone is almost out of battery. The logical thing to do would be to call Finn and Poe, but she can't do that to them on their wedding night. She sucks in a breath and does the only thing she can do.

"Rey?"

Ben picks up on the first ring. She is so surprised that she forgets for a moment that she should respond.

"Rey, is that you? Are you okay?"

"Are you in the city?" she asks, deflecting the question.

"I am," he says, "I'm in a hotel. What's wrong?"

She doesn't answer, still wrapping her head around this certifiably insane thing she is about to do.

"I can hear it in your voice, Rey. Tell me."

"Can I …" She presses a hand to her forehead, squeezing her eyes shut in embarrassment and immediately regretting it when the eye that Samuel hit starts throbbing anew. "I just, um — this is a lot to ask, and I know you've probably got an early flight or something, and you probably don't have any room, but — "

"Jesus, kid," he says at once, "where are you?"

"Oh," she says lightly, maybe a little too lightly. "Um, no, don't worry, it's fine, you don't have to — "

"I'm getting in a cab right now. Tell me where you are."

She takes a shuddering breath and tells him the intersection.

* * *

It's dark in the cab. She keeps her hood up and murmurs a hello to him, and he stares at her in the darkness, but doesn't press her. He tells the driver to go back to the hotel, and Rey sits ramrod straight in her seat, thankful that the mark is on the side of her face that he can't see. She figures based on the location of the hotel that she has just enough time in this drive to come up with a convincing lie.

The moment she emerges from the car and Ben sees her in the light of the hotel's awning, his mouth falls open, and then sets with an immediate, steady rage.

"He did this to you?"

The lie evaporates on her lips before she can utter it. She is so exhausted, so tired. She has already absorbed all of Samuel's anger in this night; she does not need Ben's as well.

His hand is under her chin, and she closes her eyes for a brief moment, remembering a time he did this to her when they were practically still kids. She is reluctant this time, feeling an inexplicable shame as his eyes search her face, as his knuckles graze the edges of the bruise.

"I'll kill him."

"No," she says, regretting this already. She takes a step back, shaking her head. "I shouldn't have — I'm sorry, Ben, I shouldn't have called you."

"Wait, Rey, wait," says Ben, following her but making sure to keep a safe enough distance away from her that it isn't too aggressive. "I'm sorry. I don't mean that. I just — I don't like seeing you hurt, it scares me."

She grits her teeth so she doesn't say the obvious and unhelpful sarcastic remark that immediately comes to mind: Does it, Ben? Of all the people in her life, nobody has ever hurt her worse than he did.

"It's late," he says. "Let's go upstairs and I'll take care of your eye, okay?"

She wants to weigh her options, but there aren't any other options to weigh. "Okay," she says.

He doesn't try to take her hand, or stare too hard, or press her any further. She draws her hood back up over her face and they ride the elevator in silence, a comfortable distance away from each other. She is too preoccupied with the events of the last hour to feel that same heat, that same intensity she felt when she ran into him at the wedding; she feels wrung out, as if all of those feelings have been drained out of her.

He sits her down on the edge of the bed and grabs a first aid kit, cleaning her up with such tenderness and precision that she can't help but break the silence: "You seem awfully good at this."

He doesn't return her smile, still fixated on her bruise. "I'm a doctor," he says.

"Oh." She probably should have known that. "Wow — good for you."

"I've seen your photographs," he says. "They're breathtaking."

He's looking at her in the eyes again, and she finds herself flushing. "Thank you." She hears that a lot, of course, but it means so much more coming from him.

Silence again. He finishes tending to her eye, then sits on the edge of the bed with her, almost a full arm's reach away. It is as if he is afraid to get too close to her. It is the closest she has been to Ben in years, and he has never seemed further away.

"Rey, I have to ask, and then I promise I won't ask anything else."

She considers him, then nods carefully.

"Has he … has he done this to you before?"

"No," she says at once. She winces slightly, thinking of the time he grabbed her wrist the week before — but she never expected that something so small and so out of the ordinary could escalate so quickly. How could anyone?

"No, he was just … being drunk and stupid," she says. "He doesn't do this."

"You're not — you're not staying with him, are you?"

She stiffens. "You said one question."

"Rey," says Ben, his eyes wide and pleading on hers. "Tell me you're not staying with him after this."

It feels weird to say it out loud like this, to fully acknowledge it for the first time. She isn't expecting the tightness in her throat, the sting in her eyes. "No," she says, recovering at once. "Of course not."

She is expecting him to relax then, but he doesn't. His eyes are still boring into her. It's like having a pair of headlights flash in her periphery — she feels compelled to look, even though she knows it will blind her, even though she knows it will be her undoing.

"It was because of me, wasn't it?" he says, in a voice quieter than any she has heard from him before. "Because I called you."

He sees it in her eyes before she says it out loud, and she watches him flinch as if some ghost of Samuel's blow has hit him as well. She nods and looks away from him.

"I'm sorry," he says. He's shaking his head, more to himself than to her, as if there are a hundred other things going through his mind that he isn't saying. "Jesus, kid, I'm so sorry."

* * *

She sleeps alone that night in the bed, while Ben heads to the other room on the pullout couch. She falls asleep quickly, dreamlessly, seeming to wake from it so quickly that it almost feels as though she hasn't slept at all. The clock tells her otherwise. It's nearly ten in the morning. She can hear the shower running in the other room — he must have to check out of this hotel soon.

Her phone is dead, but there's no point in checking it anyway. She knows for a fact that Samuel is gone. He and the other partners had some business trip out in San Francisco today, and despite everything, he would get up, get dressed, walk past her ring on their front table, and go. Samuel may not have turned out to be a great many things she hoped that a fiancé would be, but at the very least he is as predictable as he was the day they met.

By the time the bathroom door opens and Ben emerges, wet-haired and fresh and already fully-dressed, Rey has gathered up her belongings and is heading toward the hallway.

"I, uh," she says, suddenly at a loss for words in the light of day. "I figure you've got a flight or something, right?"

"No," he says. "I'm staying here."

All at once her hands feel clammy. "Not on my account, I hope," she says lightly.

He takes a few steps closer to her, halting abruptly when she takes a guarded step back. It was harder to remember in the exhaustion of last night just who he was, just what he did. But now he is here, and the familiar ache is back — that toxic beat to her heart, reminding her of the love she never had, the love she never deserved. This is the face that haunted her. This is the man who drowned her. This is the man who began and ended every part of her she ever let herself think was dear enough to keep.

There is a weight in the air between them now, all of the hurt, all of the years. Ben's voice does nothing to cut through it.

"I can't leave you here," he says. "Not like this."

Tonight she is not so tired to let that slip. "Ben … you've done it before." The words are not bitter or savage, but she says them unflinchingly. "What's so different right now?"

He opens his mouth as if he is about to argue with her, but thinks the better of it before he even fully draws a breath.

"Where will you go?" he asks.

She has no reason to lie to him. "Samuel is out. I'm going to get my things from the apartment and find a hotel room, and then … " Her brain is already ten steps ahead of her, trying to lessen the blow of all of this by focusing elsewhere: she'll get only the things she absolutely needs, get credit card back from the vendor, spend a few nights in a hotel looking for a sublet in the city, come up with a decent enough reason to tell their friends why they broke up without causing an uproar. She has no desire to destroy Samuel, only to never see him again.

When she comes back from this faraway place, she is still at the door, and Ben is still staring at her.

"Let me come with you," he says.

She shakes her head. "Ben, I can handle this. Really. I appreciate it, but — "

"Please," he says. "I can't — I can't just leave you here, Rey, I'm sorry. I know you can handle yourself. I know that. That's not the point." There is an edge in his voice now, and she recognizes it – that helplessness, that desperation, the very same things she felt pent up inside of her for _years_. "I need to know you're okay."

She is going to tell him no. She isn't sure what makes her relent, but then again, when it comes to Ben, she's never been sure of anything.

"Alright."

* * *

Rey is confident that the apartment will be empty when she arrives, and the first few clicks of the key in the lock confirm it. She can feel the loneliness, the stale air that remembers what happened here. Still, Ben is poised and tense behind her, trying to hide it with a reassuring smile and failing.

Only when she strides into the apartment does he say, "Are you sure he's — "

"I'm sure."

It is strange in a way she didn't expect, being here with Ben. She sees the apartment through the lens of his eyes. Sees him take in the leather furniture, the sleek appliances, the minimalism of the entire place. For the first time the apartment seems bare to her, as if she is walking into the model home of somebody else's life.

The only picture on display is one of their engagement pictures, taken by another professional photographer Rey worked with on shoots. The background is lovely, the composition soft and inviting. Only now does it occur to Rey how stiff they look in comparison, his arm around her and their smiles looking static, as if they are in less than two dimensions on the paper.

She turns and catches Ben looking at it over her shoulder.

"You okay?" he asks.

She nods, surprised at how tight her throat feels. "Yeah."

"What do you need?" he asks, his voice urging her, keeping her on track. "What can I grab for you?"

She turns away from him, her skin crawling. There is something about this that feels oddly like robbing a grave. She has the sudden urge to leave without taking anything with her, leave this place as bare as she was as a teenager, with the same kind of blank slate she had getting out from Unkar's thumb all those years ago.

"The rest of my camera equipment," she says. "It's in the closet."

She jerks her head toward it and he sets over there at once; she is relieved to be out of his sightline, because she suddenly feels nauseous. It is occurring to her in this moment, feeling like a stranger in this place that mere hours ago she called home, just how stubbornly she has wasted the last few years of her life. She is disappointed, she is angry … but she isn't heartbroken. The sight of his sock peeking out of the hamper in their room summons no amount of fondness. The thought of his fingers grazing her skin does nothing to temper her. Only now does she understand just how little Samuel meant to her, and just how much of herself she was going to give him anyway.

She is breathing hard, breathing fast. Ben is occupied pulling bags out of the closet, so she hurries into the bedroom, mumbling something about grabbing the rest of her clothes. She wishes she could close the door behind her — something is roiling inside her all of a sudden, and she doesn't know if she is going to laugh, or cry, or throw up, or some awful combination of the three.

In some attempt to steady herself, she stops midway across the room, leaning on the dresser. She catches her reflection in the mirror and flinches; the bruise has darkened and swollen around her eye. It is ugly and demanding, staring back at her, mocking her.

She doesn't realize she is crying until she sees her tears in the reflection, and then she wrenches her face away, swiping at her good eye to stench the flow. She feels stupid. She feels worthless. She feels the same way she did watching Ben's bus pull away from the station; the same way she did sitting in an itchy paper gown in that doctor's office, her cradling her silent phone in her hand; the same way she did that night when she called him and told him she never wanted to see him again.

Her hand flies to her chest, her whole body shuddering as she tries to pull herself together. There will be time to fall apart later, when Ben is gone and she is in the quiet of her own space again. She needs to be alone. She deserves to be alone. She wishes she had just held firm and told him to leave her, told him to go back to wherever the hell he came from before he barreled back into her life and —

"Rey."

She feels his arms around her and she turns into his touch, and then she is crying in earnest, gulping in her sobs and the sweet, familiar smell of _Ben_. His arms are so strong and warm and steady around her, and she cannot deny herself. She buries her head into his chest, lets him pull down her hoodie and stroke her hair, lets him hold her.

It is the first time it occurs to her that in all their time together, Samuel never once saw her cry.

She pulls away from Ben then, feeling almost lightheaded. "I'm sorry," she says breathily. "I shouldn't have — I shouldn't have done that."

He reaches out a hesitant hand, bridging the distance between them, and she flinches away from him. The hurt in his eyes is so palpable that she feels it echoing in her own bones.

"I can't do this again," she says, holding her arms to her chest. In her next breath, she knows what she truly means: she will _never_ do this again. She will never fall in love. She will never marry. She will never open her heart, never bare her soul, never give parts of herself that she can't win back.

There is some relief in that. In knowing that this is the worst she will ever feel, the most unworthy, the most unloved; that if she can come back from this, she can come back from anything.

"Can I just — can I tell you something?"

She doesn't turn around, but she nods. She is numb. Even as she gives him permission to speak, she knows she will not listen.

"After we broke up — "

"After _you_ broke up with _me_ ," she says, surprising herself with how quickly she breaks her own rules.

A few beats of silence, and then: "After I … after I broke up with you, I was a wreck."

She suppresses the snort that threatens to bubble to the surface, the same snark she has protected herself with since the day she was first put into the foster system. She barely even breathes, listening to eight years worth of hate dissolve out of her skin, still hanging on his every word.

"I spent the whole week a drunken, stupid wreck," he says. "I was — I was so stupid, Rey, so selfish. I went out every night and got shitfaced and woke up and did it all over again. I knew I'd made the biggest mistake of my life. I knew it even then."

She stiffens, but does not reply. If she is going to hear it then she is going to hear it all. It is the only way to close the door.

"In my head, I would — I would just fix it. I don't think I ever thought … it was forever." He exhales with a heaviness she feels in her own heart. "I kept waiting for you to call. Kept waiting for you something, anything, because I was so fucking _stubborn_ , and I needed to know that — "

"I did call you." Her voice is even. Tranquil. Let him fall apart; he can feel their pain, because she is through feeling it. "I did a lot more than call you, Ben. You know that."

"But I didn't," he says. "My friends — well, friends at the time, at least," he says with unmistakable bitterness. "They took my phone from me. They erased the voicemails. They cleared my inbox. I was passed out most of the day. I didn't know."

She doesn't want to believe him, because it sounds so stupid. But she knows him. She knows he is telling the truth, and it burns worse than a lie.

"The first voicemail I got … was the one you left that night."

Only now does she feel the sting in her eyes again, that breathlessness, that horrible lurch in her stomach. She is not sure what it is churning within her — shame, grief, even _guilt_. She never told him after it happened.

"You have no idea what it did to me, Rey. You scared the _shit_ out of me. I called and called and called but you never picked up. I got in the car and drove the whole day and half the night to get to you, but when I got to your apartment, it was empty."

His breath hitches, and she realizes that he is crying now, too. She freezes, wondering if she should turn around, but she can't face him. She is afraid that if she does he will see it all over her face. The terrible truth of what happened, the one secret she never told.

"My parents made me go back to school. I came back the next weekend and you — you were already gone. Out of the country. I had no way to find you. And by the time I did …"

Her nerves are screaming at these words; this is the one part of the story she has not expected. As far as she has always known, it ended that week when she ignored his calls. As far as she had always known, Ben Solo moved on with his life and moved on from her, one small chapter in his life that ended almost as quickly as it began.

"I ran into Poe back home at some party, about a year after it happened. I don't know why I went. I knew you wouldn't be there, but I just had to … I had to see."

The silence is so fragile that Rey isn't even breathing, listening to him choke on the words as they fall out of him.

"He told me what happened, Rey," he says. "He told me about the baby."

Her shoulders hunch, her body giving way to a soundless gasp. She never let herself say those words, never even let herself think them. She knew if she had it would have finished her. It was not a future she chose, and she knows given the chance she would have done it all over again — but it was easier then to cast away the thoughts that haunt her now. _The baby_. A part of her and a part of him, another world, another life.

"He told me how you had to … how you were by yourself," he says, and his voice is closer now, ragged in her ear.

She presses her eyes closed, and the tears burn down her cheeks.

"And then he told me that I should leave you alone. That you were happier without me. He showed me the pictures — and I saw it, too. Your gift. You weren't in a single one of those photos, but it was almost like … like I could feel you in them. And I knew Poe was right."

For a long time she doesn't say anything, her tongue pressed to the tips of her teeth and her knees weak underneath her.

"Rey?" He takes another breath and it rattles in his throat. "Please, just — just say something."

She doesn't mean to, but there it is anyway, out of her control: "You were wrong. I was never happy without you, Ben. Not for a single day."

She turns to face him, his eyes raw, his face cracked. They are both broken — both unsalvageable. Even if she forgives him, she will never be able to forgive herself. She will never be able to take back the years she has wasted, the happiness she has denied herself, laying next to the man who took his place. It's too late for them.

"Thank you for telling me," she says, and she sees his expression start to crumple, sees the understanding in his eyes as she draws herself up and presses her sweating palms into her jeans. "I … I wish you the best, Ben. I really do."

She hasn't even taken a full step out of the room when his voice catches her: "I love you, Rey."

She freezes.

"I'm sorry, I know, I know the timing is terrible. And I know I don't deserve to be able to say that to you after what I did, but — but I can't — I just needed you to know."

If there were anything left of her heart, it might have broken right then, staring into his red-rimmed eyes. She feels like a ghost, as if someone else is controlling her body; as if she is watching herself from a distance as she nods at him, gives him the barest of smiles, and walks out of the room. She leaves the equipment, leaves her clothes; she will come get them later that day. She cannot be near Ben another moment more or something in her will splinter, something in her will crack until she will never be able to hold herself up again.

She closes the door behind her and heads for the stairs before he can follow, not moving with any real haste. It still feels like it is happening to somebody else. The keys to the apartment cut into her palm, the soles of her feet ache in her sneakers, her body reminding her of her existence in way her heart can no longer fathom.

She hits the street and stands there for a moment, breathing in the humid summer air, letting it mingle with the last of her tears. There are so many directions she could head right now, but she is suddenly paralyzed by the infinity of it all, by belonging everywhere and nowhere all at once.

Then the door to the stairs clicks open behind her.

She turns to face him, and he stops abruptly, his hands still on the door — she crosses the distance between them so quickly that it feels as if her feet aren't even beneath her — and then she is on the tips of her toes, her arms around his neck, her lips on his lips.

He is too stunned to react, but only for a moment; his arms are around her at once, lifting her up off of the ground, the kiss desperate and deep and more satisfying than Rey can bear. She crushes her eyes shut, afraid if she opens them that he will disappear, that every delicious, unthinkable moment of this will evaporate into a dream.

When they finally pull apart, they are both breathless, staring up at each other with a kind of wonder she didn't think she was capable of feeling anymore. It is almost terrifying, how quickly everything seems to shift and fall back into place while she is wrapped in his arms. It is so simple. So easy. Like she has been wandering around in the dark for all these years, and only just thought to turn on a light.

"I love you," she blurts. There are still tears running down her cheeks, but they are a different kind now. "I — I love you, too."

She has forgotten just how beautiful it is to see Ben Solo smile.

* * *

"Rey, where do you live?"

He is 16 years old. The sun is setting, and he is laying with his back in the moist grass, and Rey is beside him. As her head tilts up to the stars, he sees her eyes go to that faraway place she sometimes goes, a solemn kind of quiet that he wishes he understood.

She hums noncommittally.

"It's just, I've never seen your house. You're like a ghost. You just show up at school and leave and come back again."

"So do you."

"Yeah, but you've seen my house. You've met my parents."

"Your mom is my English teacher."

"Ugh. Don't remind me."

A silence settles over them then. Ben tries to follow her to the faraway place, tries to imagine who Rey is when she's not with him. If someone had told him a year ago he would end up best friends with the uptight, mouthy enigma that was Rey, he wouldn't have believed them — but now here she is, oddly precious to him, more so than anyone he has ever known.

The haziness of his thoughts is abruptly interrupted by a star that streaks across the sky. " _Rey_ ," he says, pointing.

She doesn't answer. He turns his head in the grass and sees that her eyes are shut, her pale face the picture of peace as it reflects almost hauntingly in the moonlight. She breathes in and out, so steadily, so reliably. He watches her for a long time, listening to the sound of it.

He wonders what she is doing here with him. He wonders if she ever feels the same weird yearning in her gut when their shoulders brush, or if she feels topsy-turvy when their eyes stick on each other's for too long, or if she thinks about him when he isn't around. He wonders if she feels a fraction of the things he feels for her, or if he has been building this up in his head to be something that it isn't.

He loves her. He knows that, and has known for awhile now. But he also knows Rey — how scared she is. How skittish. How lonely. He could never risk wrecking their friendship by telling her; he could never put her in a position where she thought that this was conditional, because it isn't. He will love her no matter how she feels about him, but he doesn't trust himself enough to try and put that into words.

When he is sure that she is completely and utterly asleep, so far gone that she doesn't even flinch after a horn honks on the highway, he inches closer to her and skims the top of her forehead with his lips.

He doesn't know what will happen, or what they will be, or what they won't. But right now he is her friend, in this beautiful, fragile quiet under the stars, being her friend is more than enough.

* * *

That's all, folks. Hit me up at heyloreylo on Tumblr if you have any prompts!


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